Conventional scene depicting madness in opera
A mad scene is an enactment of insanity in an opera, play,[1] or the like. It may be well contained in a number, appear during or recur throughout a more through-composed work, be deployed in a finale, form the underlying basis of the work, or constitute the entire work. They are often very dramatic, representing virtuoso pieces for singers. Some were written for specific singer, usually of a soprano Fach.
Many notable examples were composed for either opere serie or semiserie, as in those of Georg Frideric Handel.
They were a popular convention of French and especially Italian opera in the early 19th century, becoming a bel canto staple. Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor is the most famous example. As composers sought more realism (verismo), they adapted the convention and better integrated the scene into the opera.
With the rise of psychology (and advances in psychiatry), modernist composers revived and transformed the mad scene in expressionist operas and similar genres (e.g., melodramas, monodramas). Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg depicted madness in new and dissonant idioms in the early 1900s. Berg and Britten wrote mad scenes for male roles.
The modern musical theatre was also influenced by the operatic mad scene, as in Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard or Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.
Some ballets contain similar scenes, most notably Adam's Giselle.[1]
